Wrongs Set Right
by AngelQueen
Summary: His memory returns slowly. Things he'd rather not remember. Sparky.


_Disclaimer: Stargate Atlantis and its characters don't belong to me. No copyright infringement is meant and no money is being exchanged._

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His memory returns slowly. Things he'd rather not remember. Practically assaulting Teyla. Attacking the very men he called upon to keep him from harming the rest of the expedition. He sees these things in his dreams and wakes with a horrible sense of revulsion, even self-hatred.

There are other things in his nightmares, sensations and feelings. The desperate need to get away from someone, something. The knowledge that he has to die to… It was all so hazy by then, so hard for him to see and understand…

It is well into the second week of his infirmary stay that he sees it. Or rather, he sees her. Coming into his quarters, trying to make him feel better, to be of some comfort in some small way. He sees himself, remembering the feeling of wrongness that kept growing inside him with every passing minute. He remembers thinking her crazy for coming anywhere near him when he's becoming a monster. He remembers deliberately trying to frighten her, to get her to go away, to keep her safe. His control is slipping. He cannot be trusted.

But she comes back. By then, what little mastery he has over himself is hanging on by the slimmest of threads. He watches her from his perch as she speaks aloud to him. The part of him that is still him desperately tries to reign in the beast within him, even as it wars with him for control.

The image of her roughly backed against the wall, his mutated hand wrapped tightly around her throat, hits him suddenly and with no warning. The beast revels in her fear, yearns to taste and delight in it. It finds it strange that she does not even recognize her own terror, just continues to speak to him. And it is through that surprise that he is able to exert enough control to remove his hands from her shaking body.

He has to get away. He cannot allow harm to come to her. Even if it means he has to die.

So he goes. He seeks death, praying that someone will do it before she can try to stop them. It is the only way.

All of this comes to him in the course of a single night. He wakes to find his hands shaking, his heart racing. It's a miracle the nurse on duty did not hear the heart monitor.

He stares at his hands in horror. He had tried to harm her. He had broken the most important promise he had ever made to himself since coming to Atlantis: to keep her safe. He can still feel her rapid pulse beneath his bruising fingers; still see her eyes as she stares at him, trying desperately to tell him what has happened, to make him understand…

He does not sleep for the rest of the night. When Beckett returns in the morning, he is quiet and distant, answering the doctor's questions with short, usually one-word, responses. He only lies in the bed, castigating himself.

She comes to the infirmary late in the day, when her shift in the control room has ended. She has often made a habit of visiting with him everyday, sometimes slipping him a dessert from the commissary when Beckett isn't looking, or even telling him about Rodney and Zelenka's latest attempt at blowing up the city in their lab.

This time, however, he does not greet her with the eager smile or sardonic quip that she seems to have come to expect. He can't even bring himself to meet her questioning gaze, just stares at the blanket draped over him.

She does not stay long that evening. Beckett makes some excuse to her, saying something about him being tired and something he ate not agreeing with him. She obviously doesn't buy it, her voice distinctly hurt as she hesitantly says she hopes he'll be feeling better tomorrow.

After she is gone, he attempts to slip back into his mental berating, but the look on Beckett's face causes him to pause.

"I don't know what happened between the two of you, Colonel," he says to him, "but given the shape you were in and how the two SFs guarding you were after you got loose, it could not have been pretty. But you shouldn't be doing this to her."

He stares at him. Then, "I hurt her. I deliberately tried to harm her…"

"And you just did it again. Did you not just see the look on her face? She understands what happened earlier was no fault of yours, son. Don't hurt her further as you try to punish yourself."

He's pretty much left alone for the rest of the evening, except when the nurse on duty changes his IV bag. He manages to sleep a little, and this time he sees, yet again, her being slammed against the wall of his quarters by the hand he wraps around her neck. And just when he thinks he'll go mad if he has to relive this again, he sees something else. He sees her as she was in the aftermath of the Siege of Atlantis by the Wraith, just when he had been beamed down by the _Daedalus_. The utter relief on her face as she hurried towards him to throw her arms around his neck, clinging to him for that brief moment in time.

After that, he sleeps more peacefully than he has in weeks.

When she enters the infirmary that evening, he immediately spots her hesitancy; she appears as though he will try to order her out the moment he spots her. He says nothing, however, but forces himself to meet her gaze as she comes to a halt next to his bed.

He notes vaguely that she's carrying a plate of something in one hand and a book in the other, but he's too busy taking note of the confusion and distress lurking in her green eyes. He winces internally. Beckett was right. There'll be no living with him after this.

"I'm sorry," he finally whispers. He opens his mouth to say more, but his words have become stuck in his throat as her eyes narrow and begin to search his own. After a moment, he manages to croak out, "I attacked you. I nearly killed you."

Then he sees the understanding, the comprehension. She shakes her head. "It was not your fault, John. I knew that the moment I turned around and saw you. I should have listened to you."

He watches her sit down next to his bed, putting the plate and book on the table next to them. "I didn't want to admit that the retrovirus would change you so completely that you'd forget who you were," she admits. "I should have known better. You warned me."

A part of him wants to say more, wants her to be angry at him, betrayed even. He knows she trusts him, and in his own mind he betrayed that trust the moment he lashed out at her, even if he was doing it for her own good.

But she just takes his hand in her own and squeezes it gently. "We both did things we're not entirely proud of, John," she says quietly. "But we got past it. Things are all right now."

He contemplates arguing with her, but the look on her face convinces him that it would be a fruitless venture. She's convinced herself of this and he'll just have to accept that. For now, anyway. Once he's back in uniform and in a position to do something, there will definitely be some new protocols put into place for situations like the one they've just endured. But for now, he changes the subject.

"What'd you smuggle in this time?"

A small, mischievous grin appears on her lips and she glances at the plate. "They had chocolate cake tonight. I already ate mine. Hungry?"

"Starving."


End file.
